Amnesty International accused Israel on Tuesday of subjecting Palestinians to a system of apartheid founded on policies of "segregation, dispossession and exclusion" that it said amounted to crimes against humanity, prompting outrage across the board.
The London-based rights group said its findings were based on research and legal analysis in a 211-page report into supposed Israeli seizure of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer of people and denial of citizenship.
"Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while restricting the rights of Palestinians and preventing Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes," Amnesty said. "Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it has occupied ever since."
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Israel said the report, the second by an international rights group h in less than a year to accuse it of pursuing a policy of apartheid, "consolidates and recycles lies" from hate groups and was designed to "pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism".
"Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism," the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
In the wake of the report, right-wing organization Btsalmo called on Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman to drop Amnesty International's tax-exempt status in Israel
According to the advocacy group, the goal of the tax exemption is to allow Israelis to donate to worthy public causes in lieu of their owed taxes. "Does the finance minister believe that defaming and boycotting Israel is a worthy public cause that Israelis should fund," the organization wrote in a public letter to Lieberman through its lawyer Michael Litvak.
Litvak further claimed that Amnesty has repeatedly called for boycotting Israel and even for an arms embargo on the Jewish state, as well as helped the UN in formulating blacklisted entities beyond the Green Line.
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